Defending State-Centric Regionalism through Mimicry and
Localization: Regional Parliamentary Bodies in the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Mercosur
Jürgen Rüland, University of Freiburg
juergen.rueland@uni-freiburg.de
Karsten Bechle, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg
bechle@giga-hamburg.de
Paper prepared for presentation at the IPSA-ECPR Conference on “Whatever
happened to North-South?”, São Paulo, 16 to 19 February 2011
Defending State-Centric Reg1ionalism through Mimicry and Localization:
Regional Parliamentary Bodies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) and Mercosur1
Jürgen Rüland (University of Freiburg) & Karsten Bechle (GIGA German Institute of Global and Area
Studies)
Introduction
The past 20 years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of regional organizations in all
parts of the globe. Closely associated with this New Regionalism is the claim of an alternative model
of regional cooperation. Many of the regional organizations formed in recent years explicitly
dissociate themselves from the European Union as the globally most advanced regional cooperation
scheme and model of regional integration. In contrast to the EU’s selective supranationalism they
stress a strictly intergovernmental process of cooperation. Surprisingly, though, some, but by no
means all of them, have also created bodies that are usually associated with a deepening of regional
integration and constitutionalization; in other words, institutions closely associated with European
regionalism. One of these bodies is regional parliamentary organizations.
This paper seeks to explain this paradox. It seeks to explore why regional organizations have
established parliamentary bodies and which functions they perform. As cases to answer this puzzle
1
The Southeast Asian part of the paper grew out of research under the Freiburg Southeast Asia Program
“Grounding Area Studies in Local Practice” supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and
Research (BMBF). The Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS History) provided the support and time for
writing the paper. The part on South America grew out of a PhD project on the role of ideas in the regional
integration process of Mercosur. The authors also thank the BMBF (Rüland) and the German Academic
Exchange Service (DAAD) (Bechle) for travel grants to attend the IPSA/ECPR Congress in Sao Paolo.
1
we selected the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Mercosur. Both are wellestablished regional organizations often associated with the New Regionalism. While this is
undisputable in the case of Mercosur which was created in 1991, ASEAN, founded in 1967, may less
easily be subsumed under the New Regionalism. Yet, the grouping has strongly influenced regional
organizations formed in the more recent past. Many of them have carefully studied ASEAN’s
experiences with regional cooperation and emulated its intergovernmentalist cooperation format.
While ASEAN and Mercosur share certain structural similarities, both cases exhibit sufficient variance
to make them interesting cases for comparison. The key difference is that contrary to Mercosur
ASEAN does not require members to be democracies. Although with the not yet accomplished
accession of Venezuela, Mercosur‘s democracy norm has been diluted, ASEAN members exhibit
much greater political diversity, including new democracies such as Indonesia, highly defective
democracies such as the Philippines and Thailand, semi-authoritarian regimes such as Malaysia and
Singapore and autocracies such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei and Myanmar.
In the subsequent sections, we first assess the explanatory scope of a number of theories applied in
the study of regionalism and International Relations and show that most of them have difficulties of
explaining persuasively the formation, ideational roots, functions and performance of regional
parliamentary bodies in ASEAN and Mercosur. We argue that sociological institutionalism is better
equipped than variants of realism, liberal institutionalism and neofunctionalism to explain these
issues. By applying norm diffusion theory, we show in the following two case studies that regional
parliamentary bodies perform functions which are neither geared towards a deepening of regional
integration through legalization and constitutionalization, nor towards the solution of collective
action problems or democratizing regional governance. Rather, they have been established to retain
the respective regional organization’s “cognitive prior” (Acharya 20004, 2009), which restricts
decision-making to a small bureaucratic elite. This cognitive prior is in the case of ASEAN an
amalgamation of imported European pre-Second World War organicist and corporatist ideas and
2
local elite constructions of power, kingship and statehood. Similarly, in the case of Mercosur, it rests
upon deeply entrenched corporatist ideas and norms. The latter have more recently been covered by
a veneer of neo-populism which, fused with elements of liberal democracy, has nevertheless largely
retained the region’s “delegative” model of democracy (O’Donnell 1994).
Theoretical Issues
How can the rise of regional parliamentary bodies be theoretically explained? For conventional
realist approaches international institutions are epiphenomena of international relations. They do
not attach much attention to regional organizations and thus may not be expected to care about the
rise of regional parliamentary bodies. An exception are variants of realism which recognize that in
contemporary international politics institutions do increasingly matter and that international politics
is no longer primarily determined by sheer military or compulsory power. Hegemonic stability theory,
for instance, posits that durable international institutions emerge if they are created by a hegemon.
Regional hegemons interested in a favorable institutional environment are thus seen as being pivotal
in the formation of regional integration schemes. If this includes the formation of regional
parliamentary bodies, regional powers would expect that they legitimize and strengthen their
leadership role. But hegemonic stability theory fails to explain why a regional leader such as in the
case of ASEAN Indonesia or in the case of Mercosur Brazil actively promotes a regional parliamentary
organization without using it to enhance its regional influence.
Also more recent approaches of institutional realism acknowledge the increasing significance of
institutional power in international relations (He 2008). They differ from hegemonic stability theory
by no longer positing that only hegemons create international institutions. For them institutions may
also be created by weaker powers which employ them as devices for “soft” or “institutional
balancing.” Soft or institutional balancing can take the form of internal or external balancing.
3
Internally, it would be geared towards changing or maintaining the intra-regional power equation,
external balancing targets states outside the region or the power equilibrium between regions. In
this view, regional parliamentary bodies would be primarily created by one or several members of a
regional organization to respond to shifts in the intra-regional power equation. But institutional
realism cannot explain the creation of regional parliamentary bodies which – as in the case of ASEAN
or Mercosur - have not been utilized to change the intra-regional and, even less, the extra-regional
power equation.
For liberal institutionalism the creation of international institutions is a response to mounting bordercrossing problems and a device to manage complex interdependence. States create international
institutions because they are faced with pressing functional needs which they are unable to solve
individually in a cost-effective way. Successful cooperation is seen by liberal institutionalists as
creating new forms of (regional) governance with an inherent trend towards legalization,
contractualization and constitutionalization of international politics. This view is strongly inspired by
the experiences of European integration and Western constitutionalism. It entails a strong normative
and teleological dimension as it presumes sacrifices of national sovereignty and a secular trend
towards supranationalism. In this perspective regional parliamentary bodies are created to balance
the strongly governmental and state-centric nature of regionalism, democratizing regional
governance, and hence enhance the latter’s legitimacy. But liberal institutionalists cannot explain
why parliamentary bodies are created even though they are not equipped with competences to
contribute to the solution of regional collective action problems and to democratize regional
governance.
Finally, neofunctionalism and supranationalism can explain the emergence of regional parliamentary
bodies only, if they have been promoted and created by supranational bodies. Due to the New
Regionalism’s strictly intergovernmental nature, the neofunctionalist perspective fails to elucidate
the phenomenon of regional parliamentary bodies. Intergovernmentalism may at least explain the
4
fact that the formation of parliamentary bodies is usually a response to initiatives launched by
member governments, but it may not explain the often deplored rhetoric-action gap characterizing
the performance of regional parliaments.
Our own approach seeks to shed light on these puzzles. We claim that sociological institutionalism
provides better insights into the emergence of regional parliamentary bodies which do not enhance
the political influence of regional powers, are not devices of institutional balancing and are not
created to contribute to the resolution of collective action problems or the democratization of
regional governance. Rather have regional parliamentary bodies been established in response to
external and/or intra-regional normative pressures as institutions endowing regional organizations
with legitimacy, modernity and respectability.
Organizations respond to normative challenges in several ways. Wholesale normative transformation
by adopting new, externally propagated paradigms occurs rarely. The belief that external norm
entrepreneurs may induce norm recipients to fully change deeply entrenched beliefs and world
views is an overly optimistic assumption of the early norm diffusion literature. It is driven by the
Western-centrism and the telos of mainstream modernization theory and attaches agency primarily
to the external norm entrepreneurs. More recent empirical evidence however suggests that this view
ignores agency on the part of the norm recipients. Much more than being passive norm-takers, they
may completely reject new ideas, adopt them rhetorically or amalgamate them with existing ideas
(Acharya 2004, 2009). The latter two approaches are the most frequent responses of norm recipients
to external challenges and need to be discussed in greater detail.
Adopting new norms rhetorically is what in the norm diffusion literature is known as isomorphic
behavior. In order to acquire legitimacy and to survive, organizations emulate the structure of the
most advanced organization in their field. According to DiMaggio & Powell isomorphic behavior may
take a coercive, mimetic and normative form (DiMaggio & Powell 1983:150). Coercive isomorphism
5
denotes a process in which compulsory or structural power exerted by one superior organization
force other organizations to resort to isomorphic behavior (Ibid.:150). Mimetic isomorphism is a
response of organizations to uncertainty which may be the result of ambiguous organizational goals
or a lack of understanding organizational technologies (ibid.:151). Finally, normative isomorphism is
facilitated by professional socialization, professional networks and filtering of personnel through
hiring in the same organizational field (ibid.:152).
One major characteristic of isomorphic behavior is that organizational adjustments remain largely
ceremonial, causing multiple processes of decoupling in the form of rhetoric-action gaps and a hiatus
between the norms underlying the new model and the normative orthodoxy (Meyer & Rowan 1979).
At this point we go beyond the foundational studies, which capture the structural emulation but do
not care about the cognitive underpinnings of the emulating organizations. We argue here that
isomorphic behavior exists where organizations have only emulated the model organization, but
retained their normative orthodoxy more or less unchanged. This occurs where the decision to
imitate the structural equivalent of another organization is exclusively made in a top-down manner
by an inner-ruling circle without public discourse (in case of a repressive regime) – or following what
Schimmelfennig called “controversial” and “pseudo-competitive argumentation” (in case of a more
permissive regime) (Schimmelfennig 2003:211). All three modes of communication (or noncommunication) do not facilitate even a partial transformation of the identity of the norm recipients.
It may thus be further presumed that isomorphic behavior is likely to occur, if the response to
normative challenges is chiefly designed as an act to satisfy an international audience and to muster
a modicum of external legitimacy (Manea & Rüland 2010).
Acharya’s concept of localization differs from isomorphic behavior by being more than only a
rhetorical appropriation of new organizational structures and external norms by local recipients. It is
the result of a public discourse shaped by “competitive argumentation.” The latter denotes a type of
“rhetorical action,” in which the actors accept the warrant, that is, “the kinds of grounds that are
6
admissible and suitable to accept a claim” [or a norm], whereby “the grounds themselves [….] are
disputed” (Schimmelfennig 2003:211). Consensus about the validity of norms opens up opportunities
for mutual persuasion which in some instances may trigger a wholesale normative transformation,
but more frequently only leads to limited concessions by the norm recipients in the form of fusing
the new norms with the normative orthodoxy. Localization thus constitutes a strategy to contain the
costs for preserving major elements of the ideational orthodoxy, but it also entails a partial
transformation of identity among the norm recipients and changes societal notions of what is
normatively appropriate. Such a partial transformation can be identified if the norm recipients adopt
certain elements of new ideas and when they translate them into limited institutional reforms.
Localization tends to occur when the external norm entrepreneurs find vocal allies within the
recipient society or organization and when the ancien régime must not only increase its international
respectability but also strengthen its domestic legitimacy. Yet, even though localization changes the
normative orthodoxy, local norm recipients seek to make them compatible with the cognitive prior
through framing, grafting and pruning so that the core, or even a major part, of the old set of norms
is retained (Acharya 2004, 2009). Localization is thus a more elaborate strategy than isomorphic
behavior to build legitimacy through the “modernization of tradition” (Rudolph & Hoeber-Rudolph
1967). It also involves greater concerns for organizational efficiency and thus creates a less
pronounced rhetoric-action gap than isomorphic adaptation and may thereby shield against further
destabilizing normative challenges.
The following sections serve to test our theoretical claims empirically. They briefly contextualize the
emergence of regional parliamentary bodies in the evolution of Southeast Asian and South American
regionalism and seek to explain why regional parliamentary bodies have been formed and why and
how they have changed over time.
7
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
The Formation of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO)
In 1967 Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand founded ASEAN after two
earlier attempts to promote regional cooperation in Southeast Asia, the Association of Southeast
Asia (ASA) (1961) and Maphilindo (1963), had failed. With the accession of Brunei (1984), Vietnam
(1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997) and Cambodia (1999) all Southeast Asian countries have joined
ASEAN except Timor Leste which gained independence from Indonesia in 2002. The creation of
ASEAN was certainly inspired by the rising tide of communism in Southeast Asia, but also by the
desire to create peaceful inter-state relations in a region notoriously rich in unresolved disputes.
After all the pro-Western governments in the region comprehended that only peaceful dispute
settlement would create the favorable conditions essential for the attraction of foreign capital and
technology on which their development strategy strongly relied. With rapid economic growth and
broad-based prosperity they hoped to contain the communist challenge.
Crucial in this respect was Indonesia’s ending of its konfrontasi against Malaysia (1963-1966), a lowintensity conflict initiated by Jakarta in response to the formation of the Federation of Malaysia,
which Indonesia viewed as a neo-colonialist Trojan horse directed against Indonesia. Indonesia
subsequently adopted a leadership role in the formation of ASEAN, in the process becoming the
grouping’s primus inter pares. It transferred to ASEAN norms of Malay village political culture such as
musyawarah dan mufakat (deliberation to reach consensus) and the concept of ketahanan regional
(regional resilience), an extension of its national security doctrine of ketahanan nasional (national
resilience). The latter indicated that Indonesia was also a strong proponent of an intergovernmental
format of regional cooperation which distinguished ASEAN from the European Community’s (EC)
selective supranationalism. In the early years, the annual foreign ministers meeting became the
association’s main decision-making body, later replaced by summits of the heads of state and
8
government. With the widening functional scope of cooperation, additional ministerial rounds in the
respective policy fields increased the grouping’s organizational complexity. Day-to-day routine work
was in the hands of senior officials, since 1976 supported by a Jakarta-based secretariat. By that
time, ASEAN had developed a set of shared cooperation norms laid down in the Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation (TAC) of 1976. In the 1990s, ASEAN succeeded in framing these norms including noninterference into the internal affairs of other members, peaceful dispute settlement, territorial
integrity, sovereign equality, mutual respect, harmonious relations and tolerance to become the
grouping’s trademark hitherto known as the ASEAN Way.
While ASEAN’s organizational structure was highly state-centric and dominated by ministerial
bureaucracies, the association began to involve non-governmental groups in regional governance
from the early 1970s onward. ASEAN’s foreign ministers supported the formation of the ASEANChamber of Commerce and Industries (ASEAN-CCI) in 1972 and accredited a number of other
business associations. Coinciding with these developments, Indonesia started an initiative to form a
regional legislative body in 1974. After lengthy deliberations, ASEAN member countries finally agreed
on a statute in 1977 and eventually launched the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO).
One year later, in September 1978, AIPO held the first of its so far thirty-four General Assemblies in
Singapore (The House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia and AIPO Secretariat 2003:2).
In 2007 the AIPO statute was slightly amended and the organization renamed ASEAN InterParliamentary Assembly (AIPA).
As laid down in the AIPA statute, the parliamentary forum’s main decision-making and executive
bodies are the General Assembly, the Presidency, the Executive Committee, the Committees, a
women’s group (WAIPA), the Secretariat, the National AIPA Secretariats and, launched very recently,
the AIPA Caucus. The General Assembly as the main formal decision-making body meets annually
and convenes in the country holding the AIPA presidency. Each member country sends up to fifteen
delegates. The delegation is headed by the Speaker or his representatives, at least five members of
9
the delegation must be women and, in order to ensure a modicum of continuity, at least five
members must have participated in the immediately preceding General Assembly. The General
Assembly adopts policy initiatives and provides inputs to policy formulation on issues of common
concern through resolutions and recommendations. All its decisions must be made by consensus. It is
supported by six Standing Committees,2 Study Committees and Ad-hoc Committees.
The presidency rotates among member countries in alphabetical order. The President represents
AIPA at ASEAN Summits and chairs the Executive Committee. The latter is composed of not more
than three delegates of each member parliament, one of whom shall be the Speaker. The Executive
Committee prepares the agenda of the General Assembly, proposes setting up committees, monitors
the implementation of the latter’s resolutions, supervises the AIPA Secretariat and appoints the
Secretariat’s staff.3
The AIPA Secretariat is headed by a Secretary General, who is appointed by the AIPA President with
the approval of the General Assembly for a 3-year term. He or she monitors and conducts all AIPA
activities and interacts with ASEAN, in particular the ASEAN Secretariat, and with other international
parliamentary organizations. With only five experts the Secretariat’s staff is small, which may suffice
to carry out routine work but which is absolutely inadequate to tackle more ambitious tasks. In its
monitoring and implementing tasks the Secretariat is thus strongly dependent on the AIPA National
Secretariats which serve as links between the national legislature and AIPA.
The revised Statute of 2007 not only changed AIPO’s name to AIPA, but in accordance with the
objectives of the ASEAN Charter also sought to strengthen ASEAN’s implementation capacity and
thereby contribute to a deepening of Southeast Asian regionalism.4 One way of doing this is to work
2
These are Committees on Political, Economic, Social and Organizational Matters, Joint Communiqué and
Dialogue with Observer Countries.
3
See AIPA Statute, AIPA Website http://www.aipasecretariat.org/about/statutes/ (accessed 19 September
2010).
4
http://www.aipasecretariat.org/about/background-history/the-renaming-of-aipo-to-aipa/ (accessed 19
September 2010.
10
towards a greater harmonization of legislation among ASEAN countries and to place greater
emphasis on the implementation of AIPA’s resolutions through the member legislatures. In order to
facilitate these two objectives, AIPA formed a new body, the AIPA Caucus. The Caucus consists of
three members from each country, one member from Special Observer Countries, the Secretary
General of AIPA and one official each from the respective AIPA National Secretariats.5
AIPA’s organizational structure suggests that the forum is not a genuine regional legislature. As a
legislature it would perform representative, legislative and oversight functions. AIPA, however, does
not perform any of these functions to a noteworthy extent. AIPA’s representativeness is spurious as
the majority of member countries send handpicked delegates from the ruling parties to the General
Assembly. Opposition legislators are conspicuously absent.
As a strictly intergovernmental institution AIPA also lacks legislative powers. It exerts its limited
recommendatory functions mainly through resolutions of which it has passed over 400 since its
inauguration in 1977. This said does not mean to belittle the effect of resolutions. Resolutions passed
by a highly articulate, representative and, hence, legitimate body may well develop substantial
discursive power. The debates preceding resolutions may help to create fresh insights into existing
problems, resolutions may have agenda-setting functions and may frame, dramatize and publicize
issues, thereby exerting early warning functions. Yet, as much as AIPA’s resolutions are intended to
serve as policy inputs to regional governance, they are usually very general and lacking precise
guidelines and technical specifications how identified problems could be addressed and remedied.
This vagueness leaves national legislatures much room for interpretation on how to translate
resolutions into national law, a deficiency seriously impeding the envisioned harmonization of ASEAN
laws. Worse even, as AIPA resolutions are non-binding, national legislatures cannot be forced to
implement them, thereby complicating another goal AIPA has placed high on its agenda since its
5
See AIPA Website, http://www.aipasecretariat.org/reports/aipa-caucus-reports/first-aipa-caucus-report/ and
http://www.aipasecretariat.org/reports/aipa-caucus-reports/second-aipa-caucus-report/
(accessed
19
September 2010).
11
renaming. Finally, the AIPA Caucus as the new body designed to support a greater legalization of
ASEAN through promoting the harmonization of national legislation, is so far organizationally
absolutely underequipped to perform the ambitious tasks envisaged for it.
Given the body’s pro-government composition, it is also hardly surprising that it does not critically
scrutinize official ASEAN policies. In fact, its oversight performance is weak. Rather than acting as
watchdogs over regional policies, AIPA General Assemblies retroactively affirm policies previously
agreed by ASEAN. AIPA resolutions “support,” “welcome,” “re-affirm” or “endorse” ASEAN policies,
even if these are at variance with the aspirations and expectations of legislators’ constituents and the
policies promoted by national legislatures. One illustrative example in this respect is AIPA’s persistent
support for trade liberalization under the auspices of ASEAN’s Economic Community pillar despite
the fact that the Indonesian, Philippine and Thai parliaments prefer more protectionist policies. An
exception in this respect is the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC), a group of
legislators loosely connected with AIPA which formed the caucus in 2004. Most of its members are
from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, and a few from Singapore and Cambodia.
They vocally criticize ASEAN’s policy of “constructive engagement” towards Myanmar, although
Jones has shown that the governments of some of these countries merely instrumentalize their
parliamentarians to initiate shifts in their Burma policy without overly damaging official relations
(Jones 2009). Yet, due to the controversial issues raised by the caucus which especially the
authoritarian regimes in ASEAN regard as irritating, AIPA so far denied the Caucus recognition as an
official body of AIPA. The same occurred to the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Caucus on Good
Governance which was launched in late 2005 by many of the legislators who are active in the AIMPC.
12
Explaining ASEAN’s Legislative Body
How do we explain the formation of AIPO and the fact that the forum of Southeast Asian legislators is
quite remote from a regional legislature? Indonesia has initiated AIPO, but neither used it to create
for itself a favorable institutional environment nor as an institutional arena for strengthening its
regional leadership role. AIPO also did not become a vehicle for purposes of institutional balancing.
While all these observations rule out realist explanations, liberal institutionalist explanations likewise
cannot well explain AIPO’s formation and operation as legislators did little to contribute to the
solution of the region’s collective action problems.
Sociological institutionalism offers a more persuasive answer to our puzzle, explaining the initiative
to create AIPO as mimetic isomorphic behavior.6 The latter is – as we have argued above - a response
of organizations to uncertainty resulting from ambiguous organizational goals and/or a lack of
understanding organizational technologies (DiMaggio & Powell 1983:151). Taking a closer look at the
circumstances of AIPO’s formation, ASEAN was indeed in a situation of profound uncertainty. The
end of the Vietnam War ushered in major geopolitical changes to which the organization had to
respond by adjusting its organizational goals. While it did this with the Treaty of Amity and
Cooperation (TAC) and the Declaration of ASEAN Concord at its first summit held in Bali in 1976,
several of its member governments such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines also faced
domestic challenges and intensifying demands for more democracy. Uncertainties also loomed in the
economic realm. Malaysia and Singapore lost their Commonwealth preferences with the British
accession to the EC, while import substitution in Thailand and the Philippines had reached the limits
of narrow domestic markets and was in the stranglehold of protectionist vested interests.
As ASEAN countries continued to regard continuous rapid economic growth as a major precondition
to contain communist threats, most of them initiated a shift towards a more outward-looking export-
6
See also Jetschke (2009) and Jetschke & Rüland (2009).
13
oriented development strategy. While their policies of economic opening were plurilateral, the EC
was one of the main targets. In the early 1970s ASEAN countries intensified relations with the EC,
which by the end of the decade became an ASEAN dialogue partner, a process culminating in a
cooperation treaty concluded in 1980. In the view of ASEAN governments, more European capital
could be attracted and economic relations intensified, if the association succeeds boosting its
legitimacy and respectability. Hence, the imitation of European structures of economic interest
representation through the formation and accreditation of regional business organizations and the
establishment of a regional legislative body. Already in the 1970s the EC was widely acknowledged as
the most advanced and most successful scheme of regional integration which other regional
organizations found worthwhile to emulate.
While the idea to create a regional legislative body may have been the result of institutional mimicry,
the actual formation may be better explained as coercive isomorphic behavior. Although the initial
response of ASEAN member countries to the Indonesian overtures was lukewarm, they eventually
agreed to the formation of AIPO when after the Helsinki Accord, Jimmy Carter’s election as U.S.
president and the emergence of transnational advocacy networks, democracy and human rights for
the first time became international themes and exerted pressures on ASEAN’s autocracies. Their
structural dependencies on Western powers have certainly been part of their motivation to
rhetorically emulate the European Parliament and to create a façade of adherence to democratic
principles.
That the formation of AIPO was driven by isomorphic behavior can also be gleaned from the fact that
it did not go hand in hand with even a partial identity change among ASEAN government elites. The
formation of AIPO was an exclusively elitist decision, without even a modicum of public debate and
largely addressed to an international audience. It left ASEAN’s cognitive prior largely unaltered.
ASEAN’s cognitive prior differs strongly from the liberal-pluralist model of interest representation to
which ASEAN seemed to tilt with the accreditation of interest groups and the formation of a
14
legislative body. The operation of AIPO was devised in a way that it largely kept intact the organicist
and corporatist mode of interest representation which ASEAN’s authoritarian regimes had imported
from Europe since the 1920s, localized with organicist elements of local political culture and from the
domestic domain transferred to AIPO and ASEAN’s other mechanisms of interaction with interest
groups. European authoritarian corporatism stressed social unity, harmonious class relations which it
sought to secure through vertical instead of horizontal societal organization, limitation of political
participation to “participation in implementation” instead of “participation in decision-making”7 and
likening the political system to an organic or familial system. These ultra-conservative notions of
societal organization tallied well with local beliefs about the nature of power. The latter, derived
from Hindu-Brahmanic court rules in the Indianized parts of Southeast Asia, perceived power as a
resource that is indivisible, finite, amoral and concentrated in the ruler. Decentralization or the
existence of multiple power centres, due to their power-limiting effects virtues in liberal-pluralist
theory, were therefore regarded as weakness and symptom of the ruler’s waning legitimacy
(Anderson 1972). Authoritarian corporatism also resonated well in Islamic societies with the unity of
religion and state, Confucianism, socialist political systems and in Philippine Catholicism.
A closer look at AIPO’s operation suggests that the forum has never shed its organicist and
corporatist ideational underpinning. First, until to the present, many delegations regard the exclusion
of opposition legislators as an act of strengthening regional unity. Second, AIPO and, subsequently,
AIPA’s largely affirmative posture towards ASEAN’s regional policies indicates that it is a body for
strengthening “participation in implementation” rather than “participation in decision-making.”
AIPO, in other words, is thus primarily acting as a transmission belt, making ASEAN policies palatable
to legislatures which usually exhibit greater scepticism towards regional cooperation than
government bureaucrats. Third, until very recently, AIPO documents suggest that the forum’s largely
anti-liberal notions of concepts such as democracy and human rights have hardly changed since the
7
For the various modes of participation, see Cohen& Uphoff (1980).
15
1970s. Fourth, and final, a closer examination of the speeches held at the General Assemblies
indicates that the language of corporatism with its frequent references to kinship and familism, unity
and harmony is still ubiquitous.
The renaming of AIPO into AIPA has hardly changed this pattern. It is another mimetic response, this
time driven by increasing external and domestic pressures on ASEAN governments to democratize
their polities and, for the first time, also regional governance. While most of these demands to
democratize ASEAN decision-making centred on civil society participation, forcing ASEAN to make
substantial concessions and triggering a partial identity change among some member governments,
there was little pressure to democratize ASEAN’s legislative body. Demands to create a regional
legislature date back to the 1980s, but have never received serious consideration. Given the low
public trust legislatures and legislators enjoy in most ASEAN countries, they were never mentioned in
public debates as vehicles to democratize regional governance. The re-naming of AIPO thus had few
practical consequences and did not change the bodies’ operation.
Mercosur
From the Joint Parliamentary Commission to the Mercosur Parliament
The origins of regional integration in the Southern Cone date back to a series of bilateral agreements
between Argentina and Brazil throughout the 1980s. Eventually the smaller neighbours Uruguay and
Paraguay were invited to join the integration process and in March 1991 Mercosur was formally
launched through the Treaty of Asuncion.8 After a transitional period of 3 years, Mercosur’s
institutional structure was fixed in December 1994 by the Protocol of Ouro Preto (POP). Its main
decision-making bodies are the Council of the Common Market (Consejo del Mercado Comun, CMC),
8
Mercosur’s foundational treaty and the protocols mentioned below are available from the organization’s
website: http://www.mercosur.org.uy.
16
the Common Market Group (Grupo del Mercado Comun, GMC) and the Commission of Commerce
(Comisión de Comercio del Mercosur, CCM). As the superior organ of Mercosur the CMC exercises
the political leadership of the organization. It is composed of the ministers of foreign affairs and
economy, who meet at least twice a year in the presence of the heads of state. The GMC is the
executive organ of Mercosur and subordinated to the CMC. It takes the necessary measures to
implement the decisions adopted by the Council. Finally, the CCM is in charge of the commercial
policy and the application of the external tariff. While the Argentinean-Brazilian tandem that
initiated the integration process remained crucial for Mercosur’s further development, the regional
hegemon Brazil has often been the driver behind such initiatives as the establishment of the
Mercosur Parliament.
With its lean institutional structure, the consensual practice of decision-making and the focus on
pragmatism and flexibility Mercosur is a typical example of the New Regionalism. Mercosur functions
on a strictly intergovernmental base. All bodies are composed of national staff and binding decisions
have to be taken by consensus. There is no transfer of national sovereignty to any supranational
instance. The Administrative Secretariat, which is located in Montevideo, Uruguay, is the only
permanent body established by the POP. This notwithstanding, the POP also established a Joint
Parliamentary Commission (Comisión Parlamentaria Conjunta, CPC), which is the representative body
of the Member State’s parliaments. Civil society should be represented by the Consultative Economic
and Social Forum (Foro Consultivo Económico Social, FCES).
The CPC, which was formally succeeded by the Mercosur Parliament in 2006, was originally
composed of sixteen delegates from each member state’s national legislature. According to its Rules
of Procedure,9 it had a consultative and deliberative character. It requested information about the
path of integration from other Mercosur institutions and it was meant to accelerate the internal
proceedings within the national parliaments to ensure a quick implementation of those Mercosur
9
CPC, Res. N° 2/97.
17
norms, which need to be incorporated into national law. The CPC thus functioned as a transmission
belt between the regional organization’s decision-making organs and the national parliaments.
Regular meetings took place twice a year in the country which held the Pro Tempore Presidency of
the Mercosur. At the top of the CPS’s institutional structure stood an executive board that was
composed of the members of the executive boards of the national sections. Each board consisted of
the president, a vice-president, a secretary general and an assistant secretary. The CPC furthermore
maintained a small permanent administrative secretariat (SAPP) in Montevideo. It created eight subcommissions. All its decisions had to be taken by consensus of the national delegations, who
expressed themselves through a majoritarian vote of their members.
Although the CPC and the FCES were conceived of as an expression of Mercosur’s social dimension,
their institutional structure and practices mirrored the prevailing norms and ideas held by political
elites in the member states at the time. Nevertheless it was upon the initiative of the CPC that
shortly after the transition from authoritarian rule, the member states’ compromise with democracy
was cast into institutional form. The Protocol of Ushuaia, signed in 1998 by all member states
including the associated members Bolivia and Chile, made the adherence to the rule of democracy a
necessary precondition for the participation in the regional integration process. Yet democracy, as
understood by the elites in most Southern American countries, is largely confined to its procedural
dimension. This also explains why the inclusion of Venezuela is not regarded as an infringement of
Mercosur’s democratic norm. South America’s political regimes have thus been described as
“democracies with adjectives,” “hybrid regimes” or “delegative democracies.” Mercosur’s
institutional structure with its focus on flexibility and its operative practice with the outstanding role
of the presidents in the settlement of controversies reflect this delegative leadership style.
Although the CPC had been working for the establishment of a parliamentary body for many years, it
thus took most observers by surprise when the then new president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, and his
Argentinean counterpart, Eduardo Duhalde, in January 2003 declared that the CPC should advance in
18
the direction of a Mercosur parliament. The idea to strengthen Mercosur’s institutional structure got
further momentum after the election of Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, with the Mercosur Parliament
(Parlasur) eventually constituted in Montevideo in December 2006 (Casal 2005; Caetano 2006).
The Constitutive Protocol of the Mercosur Parliament10 provided for two transitional periods. The
first one ranged from 2007 until 2010 and the second one started in 2011 and will last until 2014.
During the first period, Parlasur was composed of eighteen representatives from each national
parliament. The composition of the Mercosur parliament thus tended to reproduce the political
power equation within national parliaments. Only Venezuela, where oppositional candidates
declined to participate in national legislative elections, was merely represented by members of the
government party. As Venezuela is still in the process of admission, its representatives have a voice
but cannot vote. Beginning with the second period there will be a decreasing proportional
representation11 and parliamentarians from each member state will be elected directly according to
the time schedule of national elections.12 The second transitional period will result in a dissociation
of the national and the regional parliamentary bodies since Parlasur delegates may not exercise any
other legislative or executive functions in their member states or other Mercosur organs. Beginning
in 2014 parliamentarians in all member states shall be elected simultaneously by direct, universal
and secret suffrage. Paraguay and Uruguay will then hold eighteen seats, Argentina forty-three and
Brazil seventy-five. As a counterweight to these imbalances, most decisions have to be taken by a
10
CMC, Dec. N° 23/05, Protocolo Constitutivo del Parlamento del Mercosur.
Throughout the second transitional period Uruguay and Paraguay retain eighteen seats, whereas Argentina
holds twenty-six and Brazil thirty-seven seats.
12
Paraguay has already elected its Parlasur delegates during the presidential and legislative elections in
September 2008. Argentina will probably choose its delegates in 2011, Brazil in 2012. See Parlasur website:
http://www.parlamentodelmercosur.org/innovaportal/v/4993/1/secretaria/parlasur_discute_sobre_eleccione
s_directas.html (accessed on 4 February 2011).
11
19
“special” majority (mayoría especial) which requires two-thirds of all representatives and has to
include delegates from all member states.13
According to its constitutive protocol Parlasur represents the peoples of the Mercosur, respecting
their ideological and political plurality. It will promote and defend democracy, peace and liberty and
it shall guaranty the participation of the actors of civil society in the integration process. The
parliament is directed by a president who represents it and is in charge of its official communication.
He or she is elected by the general assembly and presides the plenary sessions. The president is
assisted by one vice-president from each of the other member states. Together they compose the
board of officers (mesa directiva). Members of the board are elected for 2 years with one possible reelection. The board of officers, amongst others, proposes the administrative and financial
organization and staff regulations to the plenary, approves the agenda, convenes extraordinary
sessions of the parliament, and establishes the composition of the standing committees. It is assisted
by a parliamentarian secretary and an administrative secretary. Four permanent secretariats are
established at the seat of the parliament: besides the parliamentarian secretariat and the
administrative secretariat there is also a secretariat for institutional relations and social
communication and one for international relations and integration. The Parliament has ten standing
committees, which may be supplemented by temporary and special committees and by external
delegations.14 Ordinary sessions take place at least once a month. From the inaugural session in May
2007 until the end of 2010 Parlasur held twenty-seven plenary and ten extraordinary sessions.15
13
Political Agreement for the Consolidation of Mercosur and Corresponding Propositions, see Parlasur website:
http://www.parlamentodelmercosur.org/innovaportal/file/3029/1/Acuerdo%20Pol%EDtico.pdf (accessed on 4
February 2011). The agreement was approved by the CMC in October 2010 through Dec. N° 28/10.
14
Standing committees have been established on judicial and institutional affairs; economic, financial,
commercial, fiscal and monetary affairs; international and interregional affairs and strategic planning;
education, culture, science, technology and sports; work, employment policies, social security and social
economy; sustainable regional development, territorial planning, housing, health, environment and tourism;
citizenship and human rights; internal affairs, security and defence; infrastructure, transport, energetic
resources, agriculture, livestock and fishing; budget and internal affairs.
15
See Parlasur-website: http://www.parlamentodelmercosur.org (accessed on 4 Februar 2011).
20
With the transition from the CPC to the Parliament the representative functions of Mercosur’s
regional body have been remarkably improved. By abandoning the principle of an equal
representation of all member states and adopting a model of decreasing integration, Parlasur better
copes with the enormous demographic differences between its member states. Even more important
are the provisions for the establishment of political groups. Whereas the CPC was organized along
national commissions, which had to converge on a single vote by majority rule, delegates in the
Mercosur Parliament may form groups according to their political alignment and thus transcend
national boundaries. Parlasur also examines petitions from legal and individual persons and channels
them towards the decision-making bodies of Mercosur.
Yet the improved representativeness of the Mercosur parliament contrast sharply with its lack of
legislative functions. The Constitutive Protocol and the Rules of Procedure provide for a wide array of
parliamentary acts. But they do not give the parliament any substantial legislative power. Parlasur
may propose legislative projects and present them to the CMC; it may also propose measures for the
harmonization of member states’ legislation and present them to the national parliaments. Yet
throughout its first transitional period the parliament has mainly acted through declarations and
recommendations directed at the decision-making bodies of the Mercosur. Declarations often
express the Parliament’s “support” or “endorsement” of member states’ foreign policies or the
positions they take in multilateral organizations. But they also express the Parliament’s consent to
the further deepening of regional integration. Accordingly, recommendations often call for concrete
measures in areas such as civic participation or infrastructure projects. Furthermore there are a large
number of provisions regarding the internal organization of the parliament. Most outstanding from
its present record, however, is the lack of opinions (dictámenes) given by the parliament. The
Constitutive Protocol stipulates that the Parliament gives its opinion on legislative projects, which
need to be incorporated into national law in one or more member states, if the Council sends them
to the Parliament before they are approved. The national parliaments in turn take provisions for the
21
quick implementation of a legislative project if it has been endorsed by the Mercosur Parliament.
This idea was first introduced in a much celebrated inter-institutional agreement between the CMC
and the CPC in 2003, which was the outcome of a project to improve the institutional quality of the
CPC sponsored by the European Commission (Dreyzin de Klor 2004: 30 f). Yet the CMC has never
made use of the instrument and still seems to ignore it under the new provisions of the Mercosur
Parliament.
Parlasur also performs some oversight functions. It may request reports and written opinions from
the bodies with decision-making authority and the consultative organs established in the POP. These
have to be responded within a maximum space of 180 days. Furthermore, at the beginning and the
end of its half-year term, the Pro Tempore Presidency of the Mercosur has to present the parliament
its working program and a report on its completed activities, respectively. Parlasur also holds
semestral meetings with the FCES.
Explaining Mercosur’s institutional structure
The founding of Mercosur can be explained as a reaction to the multiple uncertainties faced by its
member states at the time. Throughout the 1980s the Southern American countries had successively
undergone a process of democratic transition. But it was not yet sure how stable the new regimes
would be. The democratic government of Argentina, for instance, still had to face a number of
military uprisings throughout the first decade after transition. Moreover, the country had just lost a
war and its international reputation was damaged by the dismal human rights record of the
preceding military government. The preservation of democracy, stability and peace were amongst
the most pressing needs in order to regain at least a modicum of credit on the international stage. No
less uncertain was the economic outlook for the future Mercosur members. The outbreak of the
Latin American debt crisis in the early 1980s seemed to irrevocably foreclose a return to the
22
protectionist and inward-oriented development model that had prevailed throughout the region
since the 1930s. Moreover, the incipient globalization of the world economy and the formation of
economic blocks in other world regions left Southern Americans with fears of becoming
marginalized. Regional integration was thus conceived of as a means to collectively integrate the
hitherto often overprotected economies of the Southern Cone in the world economy.
In this situation of uncertainty Mercosur members harked back to the European Union as the most
prominent and successful example of regional integration. While Mercosur’s main decision-making
bodies, the CMC and the GMC, resemble the European Council and the European Commission, the
grouping’s representative bodies, the FCES and the parliamentary institution (CPC), mimic the
European Economic and Social Council and the European Parliament, respectively. In fact, the
formation of a regional parliamentary assembly satisfies all key criteria of a mimetic isomorphic
behavior as defined in the theoretical part of the paper.
The idea to provide Mercosur with representative institutions was not derived from a consensus that
had emerged in a previous process of communicative action. A public discourse about the future
institutional shape of regional integration was non-existent at the time. Isolated from societal
pressures, a small political elite within the national executives decided upon the institutional outlook
of Mercosur with the objective of improving the organization’s international reputation and, by
coincidence, their own political legitimacy. In practice, however, the commitment to parliamentarian
representation and the inclusion of civil society exhibited the decoupling typical for isomorphic
responses to normative pressures. Even though Mercosur’s institutional outlook resembles that of
the European Union, the corresponding organs have by no means achieved a comparable importance
in the process of taking and implementing decisions. Mercosur has largely been an organization run
by its national executives. All important decisions and the resolution of conflicts have been reserved
to the presidential level. The regional integration scheme insofar heavily resembles the delegative
democracies in the member states (cf. Malamud 2003, 2005).
23
This means that the formation of a parliamentary body did not signify a change of identity on the
part of the ruling elites. The delegative democracies that replaced the authoritarian predecessor
regimes throughout the 1980s are characterized by weak and dysfunctional institutions, which are
often substituted by informal practices, and the delegation of political power to the top of the state.
As a consequence, “whoever wins election to the presidency is thereby entitled to govern as he or
she sees fit, constrained only by the hard facts of existing power relations and by a constitutionally
limited term of office” (O'Donnell 1994: 59). The presidential leader is conceived of as the
embodiment of the nation and the sole actor capable of uniting the dispersed fragments of society
into a whole (Ibid.: 60). Parliaments and other institutions of horizontal accountability do not fit well
with such an idea of paternalistic leadership. In fact, they are regarded “as a mere impediment to the
full authority that the president has been delegated to exercise” (Ibid.: 60).
The delegative democracy practiced in South America’s new democracies may thus be regarded as a
cognitive adjustment of conservative elites to the challenges of democratization. It tallies well with
South America’s powerful organicist and corporatist “cognitive prior” (Acharya 2004, 2009). The
region’s longstanding tradition of corporatism reached its peak between the end of the nineteenth
and the second half of the twentieth century, but its origins can be traced back to the colonial period
(Wiarda 2001). Corporatist ideas have thrived under different political regimes. In the Southern Cone
they were particularly influential during the populist rule of Peron and Vargas and the subsequent
military regimes (Malloy 1977). Shortly after democratization, paternalistic thinking and corporatist
views of state-society relations were still prevalent in the mind-set of South American political elites.
Some authors even argue that civic inclusion is still impeded by a “long-standing and deep-seated
hostility towards ‘ordinary people’ on the part of the governing elites” (Grugel 2006: 212). These
residues of authoritarian and corporatist ideas can explain the creation of the CPC as a fig leaf for the
democratic representation of Mercosur’s citizens. And it also explains why the CPC, despite its pro-
24
active engagement in issues of regional integration, has never been regarded as a serious
interlocutor by the national elites within Mercosur’s decision-making bodies (Vazquez 2001).
While the organicist and corporatist normative orthodoxy markedly shaped regional governance in
Mercosur’s formative years, at the level of member countries corporatist modes of interest
representation have come under increasing pressure in the 1990s. State reform and structural
adjustment measures have largely eroded corporatist institutions throughout the decade (Oxhorn
1998; Hagopian 1998). This has strengthened a new type of political leadership that is less attached
to corporatist institutions. Challenges of corporatism came in particular from neo-populist leadership
and proliferating grass-roots mobilization through civil society organizations. Populism usually stands
for widespread sentiments in society that government is elitist and corrupt and that the political
system is in a state of representational and legitimacy crisis (Canovan 1999:2; Taggart 2002:65). It
thrives under conditions of profound social change, social insecurity and growing societal
complexities as brought about in South America by economic liberalization and the increasingly felt
onslaught of accelerating globalization. Civil society organizations, on the other hand, could flourish
in the less repressive political climate of the region’s new democracies and they could, in view of the
plight inflicted by the financial crises of the 1980s and late 1990s on the less affluent sections of
society, vociferously demand more participatory rights for the people.
In the process, this debate about more popular participation spilled over from the domestic domains
to the regional arena. In contrast to the creation of the CPC, in the case of Parlasur the adoption of
new ideas went beyond mere mimesis. Since the end of the 1990s discussions about the
shortcomings of Mercosur’s institutional structure and the future outlook for regional integration
gained momentum. Civil society organizations had become far more entangled with issues of
regional integration than in the early 1990s. To be sure, most NGOs targeted their protests first and
foremost against the idea of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) that would comprise all
American countries including the members of Mercosur. Whereas many organizations rejected the
25
idea of hemispheric integration under the lead of the United States, they still endorsed regional
integration in the South. Discussions in these groups circled around the establishment of a “different
model” of regional integration. Amongst others they involved demands about a democratization of
Mercosur and a stronger participation of civil society in the integration process (Grugel 2006).
The idea to enhance Mercosur’s democratic profile through the creation of a regional parliament
thus gained prominence in certain segments of society. The CPC had promoted its own conversion
into a parliamentary body from the very beginning of its existence (Vazquez 2001; Konrad-AdenauerStiftung & Comisión Parlamentaria Conjunta del Mercosur 2004). These claims were actively
endorsed by the EU through financial support and the transfer of knowledge (Dri 2010: 59-62). Donor
organizations such as political foundations organized discussions or generated information on the
role of parliaments in regional integration processes. In this context of an increasing public
awareness of the democratic deficits of Mercosur and intensifying discussion about the pros and
cons of a regional parliament, the political leaders from Brazil and Argentina presented their initiative
for the installation of a Mercosur Parliament. In contrast to the establishment of the CPC this did not
happen in isolation from society. Moreover, the expert group (Grupo Técnico de Alto Nivel, GTAN)
that elaborated the first draft of the Constitutive Protocol of the Mercosur Parliament was largely
composed of well-renowned experts that had actively participated in the preceding discussions and
embraced the idea of a strong representative body.
Provisions like the decreasing proportional representation of the member states’ population, the
decision-making procedures with different forms of majorities, the organization of the parliament
along political groups instead of national sections, the permanent character with regular sessions and
last but not least the election of its delegates by universal, direct and secret vote are substantial
qualitative improvements . These institutional reforms suggest at least a partial identity change
among the elites which in the wake of external normative pressures and a vocal domestic discourse
have little choice than to make normative concessions to their critics. But they stand in sharp
26
contrast to the Parliament’s lack of any substantial legislative power, which reflects the unchanged
attitudes of the national elites represented in the regional organization’s decision-making bodies
towards the Parliament. While these attitudes may today be less undergirded by corporatism, they
reflect the ambiguous nature of populism. On the one hand, populism expresses popular desires for
greater participatory spaces in society, but on the other it also fosters the rise of charismatic leaders
whose paternalistic notions of leadership tally perfectly with the concept of delegative democracy.
Although the institutional reform of Mercosur may have gone far and even foreshadow
supranational elements, greater regional democracy is curtailed by the grafting and pruning of the
new ideas to make them compatible with the region’s cognitive prior. Mercour’s parliamentary
reforms are thus little more than a strategy of providing legitimacy to a form of rule deeply
entrenched in the region’s political cultures.
Conclusion
In this paper we have explained the establishment of legislative bodies in ASEAN and Mercosur by
concepts derived from sociological institutionalism. We have shown how isomorphism and the
localization of external norms have transformed the institutional design of both regional
organizations without significantly altering the norms and procedures upon which these
organizations rest. Both the establishment of AIPO and the subsequent renaming into AIPA and the
creation of the CPC and its transformation into Parlasur have neither contributed to a
democratization of these organizations nor to a deepening of regional integration.
Quite to the contrary, elites in both regions succeeded in preserving their organizations’ cognitive
prior. Cultural differences between Southeast Asia and Latin America notwithstanding, there is a
common denominator of those norms, ideas and values that undergird cooperation in both regions.
27
This common denominator rests upon corporatist conceptions of state and society and a
paternalistic view of political leadership.
On the other hand, differences between ASEAN and Mercosur emerged regarding the local responses
to external norm pressures. Whereas both ASEAN and Mercosur initially merely copied European
institutions in an act of mimetic or coercive isomorphism, the further path of both integration
schemes varied to a considerable degree. Even though ASEAN and Mercosur shared the experience
of increasing domestic pressures on regional governance, in ASEAN’s case they did not target the
regional legislative body. ASEAN could thus confine AIPO to minor rhetorical and symbolic changes.
In South America, on the other hand, democratic pressures did not exclude the regional parliament.
Unlike ASEAN, Mercosur thus responded with localization to these pressures, which brought about at
least partial identity change among Mercosur decision-makers and much more far-reaching
institutional changes than in ASEAN’s case. Parlasur meets more frequently, it is more
representative, entails interaction with civil society groups and by allowing the formation of regional
party factions and introducing qualified majority decisions even moves cautiously towards a
supranationalist structure. Yet, as the legislature exerts if legislative and oversight functions only very
marginally, a sizeable rhetoric-action gap remains, with the effect of retaining the grouping’s elitist
cognitive prior and delegative model of democracy. Parliamentarizing regionalism has thus hardly
been a driving factor for greater legalization and constitutionalization in ASEAN and Mercosur.
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